GERMANY has become an ordinary European Union country. So ordinary, that it does not shy away at all from fighting for its interests – something which used to be seen as ‘impolite’ in a previously humble Germany that wanted to have its sins of the Second World Warforgiven, during the first decades of European integration.

Right now, though, if the Union makes no headway in its struggle to create a common immigration policy – because it may constantly be blocked by just one member state – Gerhard Schröder’s government must bear part of the blame.

Chancellor Schröder and his envoy on the Convention on the future of the EU, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer – a federalist and enthusiastic European when his country’s national interest allows him to be – fought fiercely to maintain the national veto right over immigration.

And they succeeded.

A last-minute addition to the constitution’s draft states that the Union’s ambition of achieving a common immigration policy “shall not affect the right of member states to determine volumes of admission of third-country nationals coming from third countries to their territory in order to seek work, whether employed or self-employed”.

In other words, a common immigration policy? Ja, aber…

One month ago, it was argued here that Spain and the UK left “scars” on Europe’s constitution, with the rigid defence of their respective national interests. The Brits insisted stubbornly on the preservation of the veto right over common foreign and security policy and taxation, while the Spaniards were sticking obsessively to a system of distributing the votes in the Council of Ministers which, they believe, makes their country look like a large EU member state.

But it is fair to add that the Germans and the French have blocked progress on key European issues, too – albeit more discreetly.

Berlin and Paris were hiding behind the vociferous UK opposition to giving more powers to the EU in some areas (such as foreign affairs, for instance) and only came out in the open as the ‘bad guys’ when Britain’s by now almost automatic opposition to further integration was not sufficient by itself.

Below is Germany's argument on immigration.

The normally federalist Fischer has called for more “Europeanism” from his colleagues on the Convention.

He urged them to accept that the European interest has primacy over narrow national perspectives.

Fischer’s moralist-Europeanist position has, however, been totally undermined by his fight to keep the national veto over immigration.

There is, as always, an excuse for Gerhard Schröder’s government’s call to halt the Union’s powers in this area.

Germany fears that a common immigration policy could lead to the EU setting national quotas forimmigrants, which would risk the introduction of a heavy burden on Germany’s labour market and social security system.

Indeed, Schröder’s government was under huge internal pressure, from the Christian Democrat (CDU) opposition, to fight to keep unanimity voting on immigration.

And Schröder can not afford to bravely affront the opposition at present. He needs its support to pass a controversial immigration law (which had already been rejected two years ago) through the opposition-controlled Bundesrat, or upper house. The German government had to bow to CDU pressure, or see its own immigration law scuppered.

France, too, resisted more powers for the EU in crucial areas, despite the beautiful pro-European rhetoric pronounced by Dominique de Villepin, the foreign affairs minister, in the Convention’s plenary. But Paris did hide behind the UK opposition to dropping the national veto on CFSP.

De Villepin did not openly say it, but France did not want qualified majority voting on foreign affairs. It was not even necessary for him to shout it loudly, knowing that Peter Hain, the UK’s representative on the Convention, would fight to the end to do the ‘dirty job’. France knew that the UK would utterly oppose giving up the national veto right.

However, it is fair to say that the initial French enthusiasm for introducing majority voting in foreign affairs was genuine. Only later, reeling from the Iraq crisis, did they start to fear the consequences of majority voting. At the peak of the Iraq political debate, Jacques Chirac was terrified at the (virtual) prospect of a majority of member states deciding to go to war against Saddam Hussein, in the name of the EU, against France’s will.

However, his U-turn on foreign affairs was discreet enough, covered by the British front-line resistance to dropping the national veto.

But Joschka Fischer’s European rhetoric will leave a bad taste in the mouth, after Germany’s stance on an immigration veto.

The ‘internal pressure’ should be no excuse for Schröder.

Otherwise, UK premier Tony Blair should either be forgiven and allowed to block everything in the EU – under pressure from his hard-line Conservative opposition – or become a martyr on the altar of Europe.